


wherever we travel

by nellywrites



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Babies, Doppelganger, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellywrites/pseuds/nellywrites
Summary: When technology for inter dimensional travel ends up in the hands of time pirates, Rip Hunter travels the multiverse, stopping these criminals before their smuggling operation can compromise Earth-1's timeline. One mission takes him to Star City, Earth-17, the year 2007, where he encounters the 19 year old doppelganger of Sara Lance, who happens to be pregnant with Oliver Queen's child.  [for timecanaryweek on tumblr]





	wherever we travel

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for time canary week on tumblr, to accompany [this gifset.](http://starcitysirens.tumblr.com/post/163469000320/time-canary-week-multiverse-au-when-technology%20) I wasn't going to write any fic, but I sat down to write a little descriptive paragraph for my gifs and then all of this happened. It's really more like a detailed summary of a story I would write, since it was a freewrite exercise. That means I wrote it in one go and it's way less polished than I would go for normally, but I thought I'd share it anyway, since I wrote it. Enjoy!

Three hours he’s been on Earth-17 and things are already going off plan. It should have occurred to him earlier, really, but the possibility that he’d run into the doppelganger of one of his former teammates had completely gone unconsidered. Perhaps, if he’d foreseen it, he’d be better prepared for the situation at hand. He used to be good at this stealth mission thing, he muses. But that was before he’d recruited an incorrigible band of misfits to travel through time with him.

 

Or maybe it’s just Sara who throws him off his game.

 

He’d been doing reconnaissance on a band of time pirates who had traveled to Earth-17 in search of a certain artifact when he noticed her, at a phone booth of all places. Earth-17’s 2007 looks a lot like Earth-1’s 1967. He’d been wearing a listening device, and so he couldn’t help but overhear her arguing with the person on the other end, something about money and doctor’s bills. It was her voice he’d recognized first, and when he turned around it still took him a moment to recognize her, because the young woman in the phone booth _looked_ like Sara, and certainly _sounded_ like her, but she was cradling a large pregnant belly in her hands.

 

Rip stares at her distended stomach, as if it will somehow explain itself. The sight of it, of _her,_ is so disquieting that it steals his breath for a second. When he catches the name ‘Oliver’, his heart sinks and he knows for sure that it’s her. Rip understands that even in the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, some things remain constant. Earth 17 won’t have a Queen’s Gambit disaster, but that doesn’t mean that this version of Oliver and Sara wouldn’t have their lives completely upended by a rash and ill-thought decision.

 

Rip watches Sara hang up the phone and dry her tears. She looks around, as if to check if anyone had noticed her private and emotional moment. Rip hides behind a car, preserving her dignity and he sees her leave the phone booth and walk into a diner that’s located across the street from where the phone booth is.

 

Rip knows he shouldn't get involved, and much less do something reckless, like get attached. But it's Sara. And it doesn’t matter that it isn’t the Sara he knows, his Sara. He aches with missing her, the one he left behind, and here is another version of the woman he cares so much for, and he can see she's scared and alone and vulnerable in ways that remind him of his Sara, except this one is so young still.

 

Against his better judgment he decides to interfere. Just one act of kindness from a stranger to brighten her day and he'll be on his way, he tells himself as he walks into the diner behind her. She’s sitting at a table, alone, staring off into nothing. He buys a slice of blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream on top. He’s hoping her affinity for that particular treat has transcended the multiverse. He takes the dessert and places it on her table. She looks up, surprised, her red-rimmed eyes glassy and sad. She’s so young.

 

“Whoever you’re crying about isn’t worth your tears,” he says. And god, it’s so trite but it makes her smile at him so he’s okay with it.

 

It should be that, but it isn’t.

 

He sees her again, a few days later. He isn’t intentionally seeking her out, but he does linger by the diner when he passes through, just in case. And sure enough, she appears before long. Sara recognizes him at once, and beams at him.

 

“Pie guy!” she says. “Thank you for that, by the way. I was having a really bad day. You made it all better.”

 

“Everything alright now?”

 

“It’s getting there.”

 

“Glad to hear that.”

 

“I’m Sara,” she says and he fights the urge to say _I know_.

 

“Rip Hunter.”

 

“Your name is Rip? What does that even mean? Is that short for Ripert?”

 

She smiles at him, all dimples and innocent eyes. It seems Sara Lance is an imp in any Earth.

 

“That’s a new one. It’s not short for anything. It’s just my name.”

 

“You sure have strange names where you’re from. Listen, can I buy you a coffee? To say thanks for the pie?”

 

He should say no, he _really_ should say no. He better than anyone knows the dangers of interfering, and he’s already done enough. But she’s looking at him like her whole happiness depends on his answer and so he says yes.

 

He follows her into the diner, lets her buy him a coffee and he listens to her as she talks and talks about everything she can think of.  And she tells him about the guy she’d been crying over the day they’d met; her baby’s father, who also happens to be her sister’s boyfriend. It was a stupid mistake, she says, and now everyone is mad at her and Oliver keeps avoiding her and acting like the baby isn’t real, and she has no idea what she’s supposed to do. He wants to reassure her that it won’t always be that way. That Oliver Queen will grow out of it, become a man, but he can’t, because this is a different Oliver Queen.

 

It’s also a different Sara. This one is so open, unguarded. He’s a stranger to her and yet she’s sharing her life story, so easily. God, how lonely she must be.

 

He can't help but compare the two of them: the strong, steadfast warrior he knows, and this vulnerable young woman. He finds he admires both of them, but he just misses his Sara. They'd fought they last time they'd seen each other and they'd both said things that he regrets leaving unresolved.

 

That coffee isn't the last one they have. It's a terrible idea, but he keeps coming back to the diner to see her. Each time they meet her smile is a little brighter. She doesn't speak about Oliver Queen again and instead asks him terribly compromising questions he cannot possibly answer. And so he lies.

 

He slips up one day when he asks after her sister Laurel, by name. Sara looks at him in confusion and he realizes what he’s done; she’d never told him Laurel’s name.

 

He’s spent a lot of time omitting truths from both of them, this Sara and the one back home. They both deserve better than that. And so he makes a choice, and tells her the truth about who he is, and where he’s from.

 

She accepts his revelation with the same practicality and equanimity characteristic of his own Sara. She surprises him again when she looks at him all serious and says “ _you know her, the me from where you're from._ ” She's not really asking so much as confirming but he nods anyway.

 

She hums, speculative and he raises an eyebrow in question.

 

"I'm just wondering what you did to her that's making you feel so guilty that you think saving me will make up for it."

***

He visits with her in between working on locating and securing the artifacts the time pirates had traveled here for. And they talk. They don’t go to the diner anymore and instead she comes into his ship, and sits on the Captain’s chair, hands on her belly, and tells him about her day.

 

She confesses she's not sure she's going to keep the baby, she’s so afraid that she’ll tear her family further apart is she does. Her sister hasn’t spoken to her in months. Oliver’s still being difficult and her father is just so very disappointed. And what if she’s terrible at being a mother? She’s still only 19.

 

“What did I do on your Earth?” she asks.

 

“History is a bit different where I’m from.”

 

“Oh, so I never slept with my sister’s boyfriend over there.”

 

“No, you did. It’s just this,” and he places a hand on Sara’s belly, “didn’t happen.”

 

“Oh.”

 

He doesn’t elaborate further. She doesn’t need to know about the Gambit, or the League of Assassins, or Damien Darkh and Malcolm Merlyn. But there is something he could tell her.

 

“Sara, you don’t need to be ready for motherhood. No one ever is. There is no training period for becoming a parent, you just are one. All you have to do is your best. I understand that you are worried about your family. Your father will come around. That’s what fathers do. Your sister might need more time, but don’t give up on her, and give her space. As for Mr. Queen, he’ll fall in love with that baby the minute he sees him. I promise you that.”

 

“Do you have children?”

 

“I did. A son. Jonas.”

 

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

 

She curls against his side, taking comfort as well as offering it. That’s the thing. This Sara is free with her affection. She hugs him and holds his hand, kisses his cheek hello. She lets him press his hands against the warmth of her belly, feel her child move inside her.

 

His mission is complete, the time pirates stopped weeks ago and still he lingers.  How does he tell her? How will he leave her?

 

_The same you left the other one._

 

This Sara needs him, or at least allows herself to pretend she does. His own Sara has never needed him and that's the heartbreak he'd woken up to after she'd had so valiantly rescued him from the prison of his own mind. Is that why he’d left? Because Sara didn’t need him? Was he that much of a self-serving asshole?

 

He can’t linger any longer, though. He has a job to go back to. A home. He has his Sara. It’s obviously tempting to stay behind with this Sara who he’s never hurt, who doesn’t look at him with disappointment. But this Sara is only 19 years old and she’s about to bring another man’s child into the world. She has her whole life ahead of her and she doesn’t deserve to be someone’s consolation prize.

 

"I'll have to go back soon."

 

"To her."

 

"Yes."

 

"Will you stay until he's born?"

 

"Yes."

***

 

“I’m going to name him after you,” Sara says, holding her tiny son in the cradle of her arms.  She’s got that new mother glow, half-exhausted, half-elated, dimples on full display. “Rip Hunter, meet Ripert Lance.”

 

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t name him that. What am I saying, of course you would. Sara, I beseech you, don’t submit him to that.”

 

She laughs. Her laugh is so different to his Sara’s. It’s high-pitched and giggly. Unrestrained.

 

“Wow, well, if you _beseech_. I guess I’m going to have to go with my second choice. Hunter Gideon Lance.”

 

Something warm settles in the pit of Rip’s stomach.

 

“Gideon will be delighted.”

 

“And you?”

 

“I’m honored.”

 

Rip’s hands hesitate over the baby’s head, before bestowing it with the most gentle of caresses.

 

“You should tell her how you feel about her. The other me. Your Sara.”

 

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” He doesn’t question how she knows.

 

“Neither was this,” she says, gesturing to the babe. “But it’s like you said, now that he’s here, everything makes sense. You should tell her. She might surprise you.”

 

“You always do.”

 

Her smile is watery and sad.

 

“Don’t forget me okay?”

 

“Never. Take care of each other, alright?”

 

Rip bends down to kiss the baby’s forehead and then his mother’s. He cups the back of Sara’s head and wipes a tear from the corner of her eye and then impulsively, he kisses her lips-- closed mouthed, tender but lustless, a gesture of comfort and affinity, rather than passion.

 

When he leaves, he doesn’t look back-- a mirror image of the day he left The Waverider. The difference is that now he’s not walking away, but walking toward something. He’s going home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Forgot to say, the title is from a line in Bob Dylan's 'Sara', one of my favorite songs.


End file.
